In 1959, armed conflict broke out again, as Communist guerrillas known as the Viet Cong began launching attacks on targets (including U.S. The subsequent treaty negotiations at Geneva (at which Ho was represented by his associate Pham Van Dong) partitioned Indochina and called for elections for reunification in 1956.īacked by the United States, the strongly anti-Communist South Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Diem refused to support the Geneva accords, and put off elections indefinitely. Armed conflict between the two states continued until a decisive battle at Dien Bien Phu ended in French defeat by Viet Minh forces.
Ho Chi Minh: Toward War with the United Statesĭuring the First Indochina War, the French returned Bao Dai to power and set up the state of Vietnam (South Vietnam) in July 1949, with Saigon as its capital. President Lyndon Johnson by announcing that the North Vietnamese would never negotiate under the threat of bombing. Despite Ho’s best efforts to maintain peace, his more militant followers called for war, which broke out that December.ĭid you know? In February 1967, Ho Chi Minh responded to a personal message from U.S. But in October 1946, a French cruiser opened fire on the town of Haiphong after a clash between French and Vietnamese soldiers. Ho began negotiations with the French in efforts to achieve a Chinese withdrawal as well as eventual French recognition of Vietnam’s independence and reunification of North and South Vietnam. Bao Dai abdicated in favor of the revolution, but French military troops gained control of southern Vietnam, including Saigon, and Chiang Kai-Shek’s Chinese forces moved into the north according to the terms of an Allied agreement. Led by Vo Nguyen Giap, Viet Minh forces seized the northern city of Hanoi and declared a Democratic State of Vietnam (known commonly as North Vietnam, or the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) with Ho as president. With the Allied victory in 1945, Japanese forces withdrew from Vietnam, leaving the French-educated Emperor Bao Dai in control of an independent Vietnam. Forced to seek China’s aid for the new organization, Ho was imprisoned for 18 months by Chiang Kai-Shek’s anti-Communist government. With his lieutenants Vo Nguyen Giap and Pham Van Dong, Ho returned to Vietnam in January 1941 and organized the Viet Minh, or League for the Independence of Vietnam. Around this time, he began to use the name Ho Chi Minh (roughly translated as “ Bringer of Light”). When Germany defeated France in 1940, during World War II, Ho saw it as an opportunity for the Vietnamese nationalist cause.
Ho Chi Minh: Founding of the Viet Minh and North Vietnam
He soon began recruiting members of a Vietnamese nationalist movement that would form the basis of the Indochinese Communist Party (founded in Hong Kong in 1930) and traveled the world, including Brussels, Paris and Siam (now Thailand), where he worked as a representative of the Communist International organization. Inspired by the success of Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution, he joined the new French Communist Party in 1920 and traveled to Moscow three years later.
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